This is the task we have all been waiting for! When we first visited Jamie at the Jubilee River Riverside Centre, he dangled a carrot in front of us and said that on one of our future visits we could do a river tidy up by getting into the kayak’s!

Jamie has been amazing and always so accommodating that we always have a good turnout to his tasks…but today was a real corker…we had 25 runners tonight! Canoe believe it! And Jamie had a lovely surprise for us

Lets go oar we’ll be late

Needing more time to do a river over our normal 45 minutes, Jamie asked if we could get to the centre a bit earlier. So I anchoraged the runners to meet at base location at 18:00 or meet our two wonderful Run Leaders Darren and Sut Yee at the Riverside Centre in case they were going to be tide up at work (but fear knot… Run Leader Darren still had a run planned for anyone going directly).

With lots to hear about Shindig (thank you Emily and Sandy for attending that)…we did our safety brief and headed out for a quick warm up.

Thank you Chrissy and Gail for being our walk leaders today and our back markers Ruth, Emily, Antonio and Keira.

Meera and her double G

On arrival we met the rest of the team and task owner Jamie. Jamie gave the team the water safety brief, he gave each runner going into the water a life jacket..which Meera was really happy about as it gave her the double G look she had always wanted.

Jamie also did a quick rendition on how to use the oars – all I heard was ..left, right and lots of swinging but Im sure there was more technique involved. So as we eagerly listened to Jamie’s safety brief we were all waiting for the punch line – the actual task information.

Well, there was the surprise. Jamie had ever so kindly decided that as we’ve helped him on so many occasions, that tonight, we would just have fun! Oh Bouy! What an oar-some guy he is…

Whatever floats your boat

So the kayak team (way too many to name however special shout outs to Alex K our Business Development Manager who was visiting us today, Sandip who came back after nearly a year and Chris, who was missing football training for us tonight)….well, they all by hook or crook got themselves into the kayaks and safely shuffled their boats into the River…some went in with grace, others were a bit close boat no cigar type of entrances.

Suffice to say, they all went riverside safely…phew! Best not to make waves…and just hope for the best.

So off they went…whilst Jean, Chrissy, Denise, Gail, Ruth and I stayed back to actually do a plogging task (someone had to do something tonight!)

Wreckon we had more fun anyway!

We collected 7 buckets full of rubbish in the time it took the Kayak team to play games on the River…yes you read that correctly…they played games of sharks and fishes; tag; catching the ball; swapping canoes and even had some races! I did hear that Ricky and Darren are in the bad books! Not that I’m trying to rock the boat but we had a very wet Sut Yee and Sara at the end of the session. I think a revenge attack may need to take place one day…hmmm, next week’s task involves water too – just saying!

Hook, line and sinker

The ploggers were all done in around 40 minutes and with a Mccy D just round the corner that meant only one thing!

Wife Denise (as only wife’s can)…took Husband Darren’s car keys, his wallet and a list of ice cream options!

So when the boat-iful boaters returned all tired and with soggy bums, we greeted them with a McFlurry of cheers…

Fish we had more time tonight as we had a whale of a time (Think I may have gone overboard on the puns today so i'll just stop now).

Next week is our one year anniversary of Goodgym Slough and to celebrate we have two things planned:

1. Drinks at The Henry on Friday 26th July from 19:30 onwards (please note change of date from Saturday to Friday) - please come and join us

2. Our one year task on Monday is back with our inaugural task owner Claire from the Wetlands and Wildfowl Trust. Would love to see as many of you as possible on this task https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/one-year-birthday-waders-n-wellies

Enjoy the wonderful sun this week everyone

A launch with a bang....29 runners smashed it tonight on the first ever GoodGym Group Run in Slough Town

After the welcome speeches and cheers (thank you Councillor Pantelic for opening our 1st Group Run), we headed out of our base location to do a warm up and ice breaker...28 people had to get to 'knowing me knowing you ahah'

I know you

After a warm up game of getting to know you (we exchanged names and our favourite places to go on holiday)...we headed out on a steady 2km run to the stream at Templewood to give this little hidden gem a strim, trim, pick and prune to allow the vegetation to flourish again. We were met by our first task owner Claire from www.wwt.org.uk (Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust), who are doing an amazing job in transforming the Salt Hill Stream and surrounding areas. She gave us a brief on what we could do to help this community area and divided us into 3 teams:

• The Waders
• The Pickers
• The Wheelbarrowers

Each team were tasked to complete their given duties within a challenging 30 minutes. Special shout out to Ricky and his wheelbarrowing buddies for showing true grit and determination of the Slough citizens by wanting to finish laying the wood chips along the path (even when everyone else was lining up for the group photo)

Freedom

We bashed those brambles (Sut Yee in particular looked very fetching in her waders), freed the vegetation, cleared the site of 10 bags of rubbish/debris (and a loo seat!) and covered the path with wood chips...phew! A lot was achieved tonight.

We faired Claire a cheerio and see you later and headed back to base in two groups

Steady vs Speedy

Our return run was a battle of speeds.. we divided into 2 groups...Mo's Speedies and Manjit's Steadies..Just for being speedy, Mo's team had a 2 minute penalty wait as Manjit's steadies headed back to base... suffice to say its steady all the way in Slough.. Great effort by everyone!

Great to see so many people join us this evening.... some of us were established runners, others were first timers...whatever your reason to run, it was fab having you there tonight on our launch event...you all ROCK!

Keep in touch?

We have many means of keeping in touch, so please take a look and join in on our journey to help the communities of Slough

• GoodGym Slough website
• Goodgym Slough Instagram
• Goodgym Slough facebook
• Goodgym Slough twitter

We will be running and doing good every Monday from now on, so please come back and spread the word...together we can achieve so much...Next week we are running a 2km route (one way) to help The Parvaaz Project on Northampton Avenue to have a garden make over